I need systems! Good systems!

I need systems! Good systems!

Seriously, help me expand my horizons Veeky Forums. Tell me about your favourite ttrpg.

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GURPS is great once you wrap your head around it.

It easily accommodates my weirdass setting ideas. Like Stargate 1888, Firefly, and Aliens: Beta Site

GURPS is actually one of the ones I've tried before.

Holy hell that rulebook is a mess, we could barely work out how to play the damn thing.

Personally I like something a little more tightly designed too, but I understand that that obviously wasn't what GURPS was going for.

Talislanta has some awesome exotic weirdness and a pretty darn good magic system.

If you're someone with a freeform RP background, FATE is pretty good. My regular group started playing it after two years of trying and failing to run Pathfinder campaigns, and we've all been having fun with the system. We all lean towards the narrative side of things, so the simplicity of mechanics isn't really a bother.

Legends of the Wulin.

Once you get it running, it's one of the best games I've ever played. The combat is fucking sublime, a combination of mechanical crunch and an abstract, narrative focus which creates plenty of interesting decisions and tension in a fight without needless amounts of rules, along with really interesting mechanics and a great theme. The best game for high action fantasy stuff I've ever played, meant for Wuxia but easily adapted with just a little refluffing.

The catch, however, is 'once you get it running'. The book has some of the worst editing of a published book I've ever seen. The layout is confusing, with some rules buried in the middle of fluff paragraphs, only referenced obliquely in a completely unrelated section or sometimes never clearly stated at all, only implied somewhere. This makes actually learning the system and making it function an enormous fucking pain. I would not blame at all anyone who looked at LotW's awful editing and just wrote the system off. It's amazing if you can get past it, but it's such a lot of bullshit that just noping out is entirely legit.

Oh, and don't buy the book. The company is dead because the Chinese half of the company stole everything and jumped ship. All of their accounts either lead nowhere or directly into the pockets of Chinese thieves. Pirating the thing is more ethical than paying for it.

Savage Worlds and 13th Age are my two go-tos. Me and my players have had the best times with these two.

Symbaroum for interesting setting, dangerous magic and "gm makes no rolls" mechanic.
Through the Breach for card shenanigans.

Unknown Armies
Fiasco
Don't Rest Your Head
Dogs in the Vineyard
...in Spaaace! (by Greg Stolze)

But I like rolling dice as a GM...!

Did you try the Savage Worlds-Deadlands set in 1917 Russia?
available only in Russian

Symbaroum looks pretty interesting actually. I don't suppose there's a pdf floating around somewhere?

Try out GURPS lite, you can start with it and then add what you'd like. GURPS biggest flaw is the overwhealming amount of content and rules just in the core set most of which you probably dont know is pretty optional.

I'll have to give it a look. Last time I tried I found the book so bloated I could barely work out what the core mechanic of the game was.
Maybe a lite version is the answer, who knows...

City of Mist is coming out soon and judging by the preview looks great. It's a FATE/PbtA mashup about noir superheroes in a supernatural city, gives me kind of a Watchmen vibe.

Blades in the Dark is the new indie darling getting hacked to pieces. Play as a gang of criminals in a Dishonored/Thief style dark fantasy London.

Golden Sky Stories is a simple, well-designed diceless game about playing animal spirits in rural Japan.

Dogs in the Vineyard is a weird west dice poker game where players are not-Mormon enforcers.

Low Fantasy Gaming is a free OSR game restructured for low magic low fantasy.

Polaris is a GM-less story game about the knights of a doomed civilization at the north pole. Players rotate small parts of GM responsibilities, nothing else like it.

Tenra Bansho Zero is a Japanese TTRPG with some interesting ideas and a really wild setting. Comparably in complexity to 3.PF.

FAITH is a sci-fi game that uses specialized cards instead of dice. A rare indie RPG out of Spain.

Fate of the Norns is a mythic Norse game that uses runestones instead of dice, with very unique advancement mechanics.

Fragged Empire is a rules-heavy tactical sci-fi RPG out of Australia with a pretty neat setting.

Questlandia is an indie fantasy RPG with an emphasis on creating a world together.

Ryuttama is another Japanese TTRPG that is fun and easy to play, focused on lighthearted adventure in a weird Japanese take on fantasy Europe (like older Final Fantasy games).

Iron Kingdoms, the warmahordes RPG (which in fact predates warmahordes, a more accurate explanation would be that warmahordes is actually the Iron Kingdoms wargame.)

One of my favorite settings, combat that plays like the wargame but on a small scale, fully compatible with the wargame's units due to using the wargame's rules for combat. Has an incredibly fun magic system that feels more gamey than most magic systems, and is entirely combat oriented, but is remarkably easy to understand.

is 13th age better than 5e? if it is in what way?

I haven't played it, but its players are obnoxiously evangelistic about it.

When you say entirely combat oriented, do you mean 'D&D' entirely combat oriented, or absolutely nothing RP related?

Take the mechanics of Warmahordes, now make it an RPG. That's basically the core of it.

Star Wars Edge of the Empire

Only RPG system I've played that seems to consciously understand that the point of getting stronger in an RPG is about being able to do cooler shit and not about making your numbers bigger

The combat system is quick and more engaging than rolling a d20 repeatedly while your DM tells you that you miss the kobold six turns in a row. Because they separate successes from 'advantages' every roll is actually interesting. You can hit the enemy but break your finger, you can miss the enemy but manage to shoot the door control, you can fail to open a door so well that you tear it off the wall.

Obligation, the system where you roll on a table made up of your PCs collective baggage to determine whose backstory/debts/conflicts become a complication in the next session, is so good that I try to work it into any system I GM. Putting a single player in the spotlight, sort of making the session 'a Worf episode' for a player is such an seemingly obvious way of promoting role-playing and character development that it amazes me that it isn't an industry standard.


Only bad thing is the dice are expensive, but there are computer dice rollers for it so whatever.

Yeah theres a lot in the basic set. I'd say start with lite for rules and just Basic Set -Characters for character options.

/oCghi3eAMC (put db.tt at the front)

Ask and you shall receive.

>Only RPG system I've played that seems to consciously understand that the point of getting stronger in an RPG is about being able to do cooler shit and not about making your numbers bigger

It took me a long time to realize this because he first time I played half the party was gadgeteer bounty hunters with XBOXHUEG soak numbers.

Pretty much.

I don't know if it's a good system, but Blue Planet might be my favorite ttrpg of all time.

Take the wanderlust of American Westward expansion, cyberpunk dystopia vs the natural world, absolute freedom and support for whatever type of campaign you wantto run within the setting (wilderness explorers? crime family goons? GEO peacekeepers? eco-terrorists? research teams? you got it!), and a "hard" sci-fi setting on a world that's 98% covered in water written by an actual ocean-scientist (forgot the term).

Also you can play as a dolphin and have it make realistic and believable sense.

Savage Worlds.

If you want tactical combat that can be stretched to any setting you can think of, this is your game. It was designed from the outset to handle a lot like a wargame, so if you have miniatures cluttering up everything it is perfect. And you need to think tactically to survive, almost all rolls in the system are open-ended and can explode - including damage. You can mitigate those times when the dice absolutely hate you with bennies or luck points, but luck alone only gets you so far.

Try Legend, it doesn't have a bestiary but the system is beautiful.

>Implying that time I completely soaked multiple rockets to the face while lying on the ground after getting ion'd wasn't radical

gotta be severely handicapped if you cant figure out the basic set. i got total ttrpg noobs to make functioning characters by themselves

Well I don't know what to tell you mate, I'm fully capable of working out other systems. I had it down to the crappy book layout but you're right, maybe I just have a specific disability related to GURPS.

I'll give it a look. Are there any fan-made bestiaries online or anything?
What's the system good at?

My man

Is that the one where Jedi and non-jedi have ludicrously different power-levels?

Book's laid out fine "mate." You just gotta read it properly. As in actually reading it starting from the first chapter. You can skip the Advantages, Disadvantages, and Skills chapters unless you're actually building a character - in that case there's a handy dandy little trait list at the back of the book where you can look over all the traits in the book with page references.

Campaigns is by far the most useful book to just read through from cover to cover.

You know, telling someone that their experience is invalid just makes you an asshole.

You might have gotten along with the book just find. Fuck, I know people who've read Wulin and not had a problem with it. But just telling someone 'You're wrong because I didn't have an issue' is one of the most thoughtless and unhelpful things out there.

Yes but that's because technically the three systems for being smugglers, rebels and Jedi aren't really supposed to be used together, they're just compatible with each other.

Force powers can be quite strong (unsurprisingly) but there's a very steep experience curve for them to get good. At low xp I'd say Force users are actually weeker.

I mean I did read it cover to cover (-any non-medieval stuff because I was trying to run a fatasy game).

I'm not telling you you're wrong, maybe the book is lovely to everyone but me, but I found it incredibly hard to follow.

It's possible we'd misunderstood the walls, but our force adept just went invisible and ran around one-shotting all the bad guys.

Admittedly I didn't know they weren't supposed to be used together, thanks for that advice.

>not making Force sensitive enemies who can resist his Force powers
>not making Droid enemies who aren't affected at all

GURPS isn't a system. It's a toolkit for making a system. Recommending it when someone asks for a system is like suggesting someone buy a crock pot when they ask what they should make for dinner.

There's no real reason you can't use them together, but Force classes are almost all top tier.

I've really wanted to run a fantasy RPG using Basic Role Playing.

I love the system. I love the familiar feel of rolling up stats, the percentile based system and the endless options. I love the fact that the authors did actual research into medieval arms and armor and give you a few different ways to implement them.

Unfortunately, it really suffers from a lack of settings. Most of the good licensed BRP settings like Stormbringer (Elric Saga) are out of print and command OUTRAGOUS prices on ebay.

The best official setting I've found for BRP is Chronicles of a Future Earth. Sadly the BRP version just went OOP, but if you can find a used copy it's well worth it.

CoaFE is old-school Wierd Science Fantasy reminiscent of the John Carter of Mars short stories, Heavy Metal Magazine and The Time Machine set 1 million years in the future.

I am currently working on a Dark Souls/Berserk inspired setting that will take full advantage of the Sanity rules. Yes, those Sanity rules as in Call of Cthulhu.

I don't know, it was my first time playing the game.

The biggest mistake I see people make in the Star Wars RPGs is thinking you're supposed to use advantages and triumphs to activate skills and crit enemies, when in reality they should be using them to dramatically yell at the group's Chewie and shoot inexplicably convenient scenery.

I, for one, am shocked. Shocked, I tell you! That GURPS fanbois would say that anyone who didn't enjoy their system and thinks it's clunky and tedious is simply not as smart as them.

In the GURPS gen they told me that they are the nicest people and that they don't act like assholes to people in other threads.

You want to know if I hate you?

Warbirds is the tits.

It's a fantastic rules-lite system that has somehow made rules-lite dogfighting manageable, fluffy, and fun. It's got a wonderful setting, and includes a Jet Age sourcebook (for maximum Ace Combat), and a Spce Age sourcebook (that updates the already stellar setting and brings the dieselpunk skyland into a pulpy science-fantasy that has a ton of space for whatever you need).

The rules do pretty much anything well with minimum fuss, and it's exceptionally balanced. Because the "do really complicated shit like fly a fighter plane," stat combines your three other stats, there's no Mekton-style "one stat rules them all."

I love it. For the rules and the settings provided, it is absolutely cash. And on top of all of that, the books are well-organized, gorgeous, easy to read, and there are only a couple of splat books. Ordering physical copies takes the three smallest of all five books and combines them into a third for super easy reading. It's the only RPG that I own in its entirety physically.

Yeah you make that sound pretty tight.
Looked it up. Sounds cool. Very cool.

If you're not running homebrew, you're a shit dm with no creativity.

>Tell me about your favourite ttrpg.
MAID is pretty cool when you don't focus on the weeb stuff.

Seriously, MAID RPG works just as well when set in Victorian era, in early 1900s Wodehouse era, in Ancient Rome (being a gay fuckboy of a patrician), transhuman Free Cities-esque ancap paradise, or literally anywhere but the generic weeb setting.

And it honestly can do anything pulpy. The core setting focuses on a prop-head culture on a skyland world, but I've used it to run PI games in a gritty dieselpunk New York during the Depression and a Star Wars game. The only stuff I needed to homebrew was the Force, because the core game's magic is more "using tokens, blood magic, and spirit communion to gain benefits to doing stuff," as opposed to throwing fireballs.

Yeah I'm gonna have to find some pdfs of this. Have one friend who loves dogfights but we always feel things are lacking in a lot of games.
Having ruleslite is just hwhat we've been looking for.

The dogfighting is rad as fuck. Rules lite with lots and lots of plane customization options to make your perfect bird. One of the minor splats I didn't mention had WW2 birds with how they'd be represented using the rules.

Stop it you're giving me an erection.
How long have you played?
What's your favourite setting/bit of lore?

I have played a few games of it. One in each era: the core game, the "Great War," that is the closest to the in-universe Ace Combat era where Cold War-era and more modern jet fighters mix it up, and the Space Age era.

My favorite is probably the Space Age, but there's a ton of lore everywhere that I just love. If I were forced to pick a piece, it's that humanity is the Warrior Race of the Stellar Neighborhood. We're heavy worlders, and are one of the only races that can use the dogfight rules without penalty somewhere because of the heavy G's.

There's a macguffin rock that makes our sky world float and its alloyed clean-nuclear engine for the Space Age solar give off MASSIVE electronic jamming. So we drag the other species to our Star Wars-style close-in-dogfight level. It also forces a lot of our tech to be Aliens-style nintendium with a ton of EM hardening and vacuum tubes and thick wires.

BVR is only fine in space with advanced heat-seekers, because we jam radio acquisition too much with our engines. The BVR rules rock, too.

Said clean nuclear engines were created using in-universe MAD SCIENCE! The biggest individual splat involves the integration of more detailed MAD SCIENCE! into your games.

Fuuuuuck that sounds awesome.
I like the heavy-worlder concept too, something I've played with for my own work.
Where'd you get the physical copies? Kickstart et al?

I ordered mine through DriveThru. I bought the Core, Mad Science!, and Space Age (which comes bound with the WW2 and updated Jet Age all in the same book).

I also got printed Mission Cards, which are neat. And you can get their small Bestiary on their home site for free. If you want the PDFs you need to buy WW2 and Jet Age separately, but unfortunately the online Jet Age is missing the two pages of SAM/MANPAD rules that come with the updated physical copy of Space Age/WW2/Jet Age.

It's all pretty affordable, too. I swear to Christ I'm not a shill, just a really happy customer.

Its basically a much lighter 4e but with the martial-caster imbalance that everyone seems to love for god knows what reason.
Played it for over a year and we generally had a good time. The combat is fun and interesting (unless you play one of the classes labeled as "easy to play" in which case its boring as fuck.) Outside of combat its pretty barebones. You get a few skills that you make up based on your background, the icon system (that no two GMs uses the same way from what I can tell,) some magic item rules that mostly apply to the combat and that's about it.
Its great if you have people that are really into roleplaying without rules getting in the way with the occasional tactical combat game mixed in.

Traveller for any and all Sci Fi.

It's kinda rare to find someone so stoked about stuff, particularly on here. It's quite nice.
Normally the PDF is the one not missing stuff, at least in my experience, so that's kinda interesting, and sorta makes me further to getting the physical copies.
Sounds like a rather solid game, will be looking into it more.

Glad I could help with your quest, user. I can honestly say that in my experience you'll need to actually put in effort to not have fun with it.

Always a good sign.
Cheers user!

I wish the last group I played this with wasn't infested with min-maxing morons because you find out almost immediately how broken and unfun combat can be then. I just wanted a swashbuckling space fantasy...

>tfw the only ttrpg you've done is a homebrew system
Kind of want to expand my horizons, but at the same time the system we're doing is perfectly fine

Ars Magica, it's a pretty awesome system that let's--

>Personally I like something a little more tightly designed
>we could barely work out how to play GURPS
nevermind...

L5R, or legend of the five rings, is my favorite ttrpg. It employs a roll/leep system and has a focus on character and world building. PCs have a sort of status quo they're expected to roleplay toward(Or not, in the case of some clans). If you like the idea of a pseudo-japan samurai game in the best, non-weeb way possible, I would recommend.

I quite like Strike!.

If I wasn't about to go to sleep I'd talk about why it's on the opposite end of the design spectrum from GURPS, and how that makes it good.

>we could baerely figure out how to work it
maybe you should finish middle school first

Fantasycraft is pretty cool.

My god, the bitch GURPSfags really will not let this one go.

Your system is not easy to learn or use when you're getting into it. Once you know everything back to front, sure, it's probably better, but that initial experience is not a fucking pleasant one. Actually being aware of things like that and dealing with it fairly rather than getting angry at people who have an entirely understandable reaction might give a better impression of your system and make people more likely to persevere past the initial learning curve. Just a fucking thought.

Lets look into it, you have four stats (roll 3d6 or lower) then you have skills which derives from stats and act exactly the same way, you have secondary stats wich derives from stats, then you have advantages and disadvanteges wich modify the above. Wow sounds like i need a PhD in Mathematics to comprehend this.

>requesting empathy
>Veeky Forums
You have to go back

>I could barely work out what the core mechanic of the game was.

You may be literally retarded.

The whole idea of degrees of success/failure has made me such a better GM. My group is adamant about playing DnD 5e, but I've incorporated EoE and PbA rules so failure is mostly interesting for my players.

Except that is not at any point what people were talking about. Reading comprehension seems like something you need to work on yourself.

Not requesting it, but pointing out that if advocating for their game is what they aim to do, doing so by getting angry and bitchy about it is a pretty fucking shitty method.

>Im to stupid for your game
>The game is a mess its unplayable
and you are still wondering why peoply bitch at you?

I'd say you're replying to the wrong person, but given that you're just making things up that were never actually said in this thread, I don't think you're replying to anyone who actually exists.

see for yourself

simple
quick
malleable

Honestly I'd recommend 3rd edition. It's not as tightly designed as 4e, but it's actually written with the intention of being played by human beings.

Fuck off

Most "systems" are just shitty fanfiction with dice thrown in every few pages. GURPS (along with savage worlds and Fate) is one of the few true systems out there.

If I can't use your book to run my caveman, wild west and space opera campaigns, then you didn't really write a system, you just gave me a useless fantasy heartbreaker

Mah nigga, I was gonna post this. Even better when you have the book printed out because the layout actually feels like it was meant to be used at a table. The default settings aren't too shabby either.

...

Earthdawn is pretty cool. It is basically a fantasy version of Fallout. In a nutshell ambient magic levels got high enough for Eldrich Horrors to manifest in the material world so everyone built magically sealed shelters in hopes they could wait out the high magic period and return when things calmed down. Most of these shelters were built underground but a few were built above with domes made of fire and lightning. Unfortunately magic levels stabilized at levels where the weakest of the horrors could still manifest and some of the stronger ones could still hang out in the border astral and fuck with people. The people in the shelters got tired of waiting and opened their doors to a new world as the ravaging horrors heavily altered the landscape.

The PCs are Adepts, people that can draw on a Legendary Archtype for magical powers. Warrior Adepts can toughen themselves to withstand mighty blows or leap from the tree tops like wuxia heroes. Sneaky Thieves can turn even the crudest tools into serviceable lockpicks and can wrap themselves in a cloak made of literal shadows. Canny Mages summon the elements, spirits, and conjure confusing illusions. Weaponsmiths eventually can forge the very stuff of their souls into legendary weapons.

Speaking of magical items, Earthdawn has none of the tossing magic items aside to get an upgrade. Magic items have the potential to grow with the owners as together the accomplish legendary deeds. Earthdawn has what I consider the best magic item system I have ever encountered, it worth reading for that alone.

That actually looks pretty damn sweet. Thanks man.

Now that looks an interesting system. Nice and simple too. I'll have to give that a try.

Also I seem to have upset some gurpsfags. I'm sorry guys, I'm sure your system is just lovely once you get the hang of it (why do you think I tried it out in the first place?).
Plus the community seems great too!

For when you want to 3.5 but you don't want trap options or caster supremacy.

Also a lot of other neat stuff.

GURPS

DP9's SilCore: (max of skill_exp_level_d6's) + (stat, skill study, hardware); high experience pc's are reliable, talented noobs can hit the bull's eye. Makes you pay for photographic memory and starting skills it makes easier to learn, unlike GURPS.

Not exactly a traditional TTRPG, but Quiet Year is one hell of a way to make a setting on the fly with player attachment.
-Play with standard deck of cards, segragate cards based on suits, each suit representing the seasons
-On player's turn, draw a card (52 cards in standard deck, 52 weeks in a year, go figure)
-Number on card presents 2 questions, one of which the player has to answer (ie draw 4 during spring asks 'What tools does the town lack' or 'Where's the town's food and why was that a dumb place to store food there?')
-Player then chooses to
a) start a project (to offset whatever answer to a card scenario)
b) explore the world (and draw a new location on the map)
or c) have a town discussion (and everyone roleplays faceless townfolks and argue what to do next, nothing really happens)
-Keep rotating players until winter happens and some unknown group arrives

Great for one shots and making towns for future RP sessions in some other system. Real issue with it is one shots can drag way long if you stick with full set of cards. It also has a hippy mechanic of 'if a player does not agree with how another player answers a card, angry player may draw a bead from the bead of discontent pile, and use that as currency to justify a jackass move on their turn.' Really can just remove this mechanic without affecting any other rule in the game

Anyone here played Battle Century G? Mech game co-authored by the genius that made dungeons the dragoning 40k 7th ed

My favorite system is Monsterhearts.

It's a game for doing supernatural teenage drama, the PCs are all supernatural creatures (or at least people with some kind of connection to it) in a high-school setting and the main point of the game is the social conflicts they have to deal with. The game has some of the better social mechanics I've seen in an rpg, but what I really like is how (most) of the classes have some tight thematic design.

It's worth any group giving a go, if you want to broaden your horizons a little.

I've always been bugged by how +2 pips allows for the possibility that higher dice show a lower minimum result, so I've planned on homeruling this so that a +1 is +1d2 (coin flip) and a +2 is +1d4.
Is this sort of autism reasonable, in your experience?

Delta Green is basically X-Files meets Call of Cthulhu. It is the best RPG ever written.

DG is p sweet

I'm probably gonna sound like a hardcore shill, but the Hastur Mythos stuff in Delta Green: Countdown are some of my favorite fictional horror scenarios of all time. Seriously, it's amazing. The new Delta Green King in Yellow stuff coming out looks fantastic as well.

Just make your own damn setting you fag. I promise you you'll enjoy it more and you'll never have an annoying player ACKSCHUALLY when you misprounce some bullshit word in a published setting or accidentally get the sleep patterns of its flavor of elves wrong.

I'm mad because I love making homebrew but can't get a group.

miniSix is pretty nice, if you prefer simple rules, it can accommodate almost anything.

I'm enjoying how the Infinity rpg is looking so far, too. The fact that characters can be switched over to the miniatures game for larger combat scenes is really appealing.

I love making homebrew but I stress out way too much from GMing to be able to do it on a regular basis.

+2 pips is just a +2 to the roll. I don't see the need to adjust it. It doesn't really scale with 3 pips being a full die, but it's not supposed to. I look at it as the character breaking through to a new level of mastery.

Careful OP, I got banned for a month for posing a similar thread on Veeky Forums. Apparently it should have been on /r/

You know where I can find a pdf of it?